Core banking
Choosing a core banking system: questions for SACCO boards.
A core banking system holds your members’ savings, shares and loans, and your institution’s books. Changing it later is expensive and disruptive, so the choice deserves more than a sales demo. These are the questions we would ask any vendor, and we expect to be asked them too.
Accounting integrity
- Is every transaction posted to a double-entry general ledger? Member balances, loan registers and financial statements should all come from the same ledger, not from separate tables that can drift apart.
- What stops an unbalanced or back-dated posting? Ask whether the system rejects journals that don’t balance, edits to posted history and postings into closed periods, and whether that is enforced in the database or only in the screens.
- How are interest and loan-loss provisions calculated at month-end? Ask to see the calculation and the journal it produces, and how it relates to the accounting standards your auditors apply.
Controls and accountability
- Which actions can require a second approver, and can you choose? Withdrawals, loan approvals, write-offs and cash transfers are the usual candidates. Make sure nobody can approve their own request.
- Is there an audit trail that can’t be edited? It should record who did what and when, including exports, statement prints and rejected requests.
- How is staff access controlled? Look for role-based permissions, limits by branch, two-step sign-in and automatic lockout after failed attempts.
Your members and your data
- How will our existing records be migrated, and reconciled? Ask what formats the system imports, how errors are reported, and how opening balances will be checked against your current books before go-live.
- How does it handle our collection channels? Payroll check-off, mobile money, bank deposits and cash each create different matching work. Ask to see a bulk payroll file processed end to end.
- Where will our data be hosted, and who can access it? Ask about the hosting provider, backups, how restores are tested, and what happens to your data if you leave.
Reporting, support and the future
- Can it produce the reports our board and regulator expect? Bring examples of the reports you prepare today and ask to see them generated from the system.
- What does support look like after go-live? Get response arrangements, training and documentation in writing.
- What is available today, and what is only planned? A trustworthy vendor will separate the two clearly and won’t sell a roadmap as a feature.
A useful test. Ask the vendor to run one loan from application to disbursement in front of you, then show exactly where that loan appears in the ledger, the loan register and the balance sheet. If they can’t connect those three, keep looking.
How we answer these questions
We built the Kainetgen Core Banking System around these principles, and the product page sets out what is available now and what is planned. If you are evaluating systems, we are happy to walk your board through the answers using fictional data.
Start a conversation
Let’s build what comes next.
Tell us what your organization needs to achieve. Our team will help you explore the right technology solution.